Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2006.pdf

Johnson’s

Pocket Wine Book

2006

MITCHELL BEAZLEY

Hugh

Acknowledgments

This store of detailed recommendations comes partly from my own notes

and mainly from those of a great number of kind friends. Without the

generous help and cooperation of innumerable winemakers, merchants,

and critics, I could not attempt it. I particularly want to thank the following

for help with research or in the areas of their special knowledge:

Contents

Agenda 2006

How to use this book

Vintage report 2004

A closer look at 2003

Geoff Adams

Helena Baker

Charles Borden

Dr Ernö Péter Botos

Gregory Bowden

Stephen Brook

Michael Cooper

Rupert Dean

Michael Edwards

Jacqueline Friedrich

Rosemary George MW

Robert Gorjak

James Halliday

Darrel Joseph

Dr Annie Kay

Chandra Kurt

Gareth Lawrence

James Lawther MW

John Livingstone-

Learmonth

Nico Manessis

Richard Mayson

Adam Montefiore

Jasper Morris MW

Shirley Nelson

John and Erica Platter

Jan and Carlos Read

Daniel Rogov

Stephen Skelton MW

Paul Strang

Bostjan Tadel

Marguerite Thomas

Daniel Thomases

Monty Waldin

Larry Walker

Simon Woods

Grape varieties

Wine & food

A selection for 2006

France

Châteaux of Bordeaux

Italy

106

Germany

136

Spain & Portugal

158

Sherry, Port, & Madeira

178

Switzerland

186

Austria

190

Central & Southeast Europe

196–211

Hungary

197

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2006

Edited and designed by Mitchell Beazley, an imprint of

Octopus Publishing Group Limited, 2–4 Heron Quays, London E14 4JP.

First edition published 1977

Revised editions published 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984,

1985,1986, 1987,1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,

1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002(twice), 2003, 2004, 2005.

No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by

any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written

permission of the publishers.

ACIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1 84000 945 4

The author and publishers will be grateful for any information which will

assist them in keeping future editions up to date. Although all reasonable

care has been taken in the preparation of this book, neither the publishers

nor the author can accept any liability for any consequences arising from the

use thereof, or from the information contained herein.

Commissioning Editor: Hilary Lumsden

General Editor: Margaret Rand

Senior Editor: Julie Sheppard

Executive Art Editor: Yasia Williams

Design: Gaelle Lochner

Production: Seyhan Esen

Bulgaria

200

Slovenia

202

Croatia, Bosnia, & Serbia

204–5

The Czech Republic & Slovakia

206

Romania

207

Greece

208

Cyprus & Malta

211

Other Europe: England & Wales

212

Asia, North Africa, & The Levant

213

North America

216–243

California

217

The Pacific Northwest

235

East of the Rockies

239

Southwest

241

Canada

242

Central &South America

244

Australia

251

New Zealand

266

South Africa

273

A little learning...

283–288

Afew technical words

283

And the score is…

285

Quick reference vintage charts

286–7

The right temperature

288

Printed and bound by Toppan Printing Company, China

4 |

Agenda 2006

W hat, in this year of grace 2006, constitutes quality in wine?

| 5

Certainly the goalposts have moved, and they continue to shift

every time one turns one’s back. For some judges, size is what matters:

when you see a tasting note on a shop shelf or a wine list that uses

adjectives like “massive” or “humungous” as though they were

compliments, you know you are in company with people who think

an SUV automatically better than an open-topped Saab, and that

music is always best at full volume. This is a simple reaction against

the days when too many wines were thin and weedy, when the only

cars they drove were pedal cars and when they were forced to play the

recorder at school. But those days are gone: it’s time to grow up.

Others regard sweetness of fruit and softness of tannins to be

indispensible. Of course, when you start to drink alcohol these things

taste much nicer: it’s why children like sweet, fizzy drinks. (One

merchant of my acquaintance reckons that the British taste for tannins

derived from having been brought up on strong tea; Italians brought up

on espresso would, by this theory, also have no fear of bitter flavours.)

Some people even judge quality by price. This criterion is not even

worth considering.

Size, sweetness, and softness all have a part to play in wine

quality. Wines that taste undernourished are not good: where yields

are stretched (and the right yield for a given vineyard depends on a

combination of number of vines per hectare, vine variety, method of

vine training, soil type, topography and the weather in any particular

year) quality will be lacking. Thin, dilute wines with no stuffing are

still made in many parts of France by vignerons who are heavily

indebted to the Crédit Agricole because nobody wants to buy their

wines – except a few misguided Brits on Eurotunnel days out who

think they’re getting a bargain.

Wine must have ripeness. Ripe fruit tastes sweet, but ripe fruit that

tastes only sweet is cloying. This is as true of red wines as of white:

there are southern hemisphere reds that taste sweet as lollipops.

Wine must have acidity and, if it is red, usually some tannin; these

are the acerbic notes that bring balance and vivacity. But tannins must

be ripe, too: dry tannins are no longer admired, even in the youngest

of red Bordeaux. Green tannins, horribly unripe, are treated with the

sort of disdain otherwise reserved by teenagers for the wrong brand

of trainer.

Texture is what it’s all about, and texture in reds means tannins.

Fashionable tannins must be supple, finely grained, and highly

polished. This last may not be a very helpful description, but today’s

top tannins have the gloss that comes from very expensive winemaking.

Red Bordeaux from Gerard Perse, the owner of Château Pavie and

others, are the epitome of polish, and to my mind taste of money, even

his lesser wines from the Côtes de Castillon. You feel richer just tasting

them. (Buying them is another matter.)

If this sounds like a list of boxes to tick – get them all and you’ve

got top quality – then it summarises the way winemaking is going. Too

much wine is made by ticking boxes. Concentration – tick. Longer hang

time, equalling ripe tannins – tick. Acidity, out of a packet if necessary –

tick. (Tannins out of a packet, too, if required – tick.) Alcohol, beefed up

with added sugar in northerly climes – tick. Weight, mouthfeel, texture –

tick, tick, tick. It sounds as though it’s made by a committee of

bureaucrats, and it tastes like it too.

This is what most of the wine made today is like: industrial wine,

produced to industrial standards of quality. Such wines can be bought

as though they were eggs, or flour: the brand hardly matters.

Don’t think that you can buy oneself out of that market, either. In

California, the most expensive reds may be made by ticking boxes: you

can hire a consultant who works with focus groups and will tell you

precisely what you need to do to rate ninety points-plus from those all-

important journalists. Such winemakers aren’t concerned with how the

wines will age, or how much you will actually enjoy drinking them when

it comes to sitting down with a whole bottle and a plate of food; marks

out of 100, and consequent retail prices, are what matter.

It’s true that even cheap industrial wines are twenty times more

attractive than the often sulphury, weedy, unbalanced offerings of thirty

years ago. To that extent, yes, they constitute quality. But, as I have

suggested, the goalposts have moved.

Now that sound wines are the norm, wines can tick all the boxes of

concentration, ripeness, and balance and still not have real quality.

Now, on the one hand, we have industrial wine; and on the other, we

have wines that taste of their terroir and of the personality of their

maker. (A possible question for the Master of Wine exam: “Boring

people make boring wines; discuss”. )

Defining what makes a wine great is thus, by definition, very

difficult. Extra concentration can look like it, but isn’t it. The garagiste

wines of St-Emilion, for example, have density coming out of their ears,

but can be far less fascinating than a Grand Cru Classé that combines

concentration with a certain transparency, a transparency that is like

passing a gap in a garden hedge and catching a glimpse of another,

different garden beyond. Too much concentration is like being in a

thickly upholstered room with no windows.

Great wine is tantalising: it dares you to catch it and pin it down,

and just as you think you’ve got it it’s slipped from your grasp. It

takes risks: great painters, great writers and great composers walk

a tightrope with disaster on one side and boredom on the other, and

great wines do the same. Risking wines that taste of their terroir –

risking marginal sites, risking leaving boxes unticked, risking not

pleasing the market-moving journalists, risking low-level faults, even –

is essential nowadays to real quality. It’s not so easy to make, and it’s

not so easy to buy. But what else is worth bothering with?

6 |

| 7

How to use this book

Vintage report 2004

E urope was much, much happier this year. It was a return to

The top line of most entries consists of the following information:

balance, to normality. Most winemakers, having had their

fill of climatic extremes in the last couple of years, greeted it

with open arms.

Sauternes, having had a great vintage in 2003, was less

thrilled: there wasn’t much botrytis in 2004 and most of the wines

are light. The reds of Bordeaux are in a happier situation: apart

from the odd tussle with dry tannins the wines promise to be

delicious, with excellent balance; often better than the muscular

results of 2003. So it is in Burgundy; and so it is in the Loire. In

the latter 2004 is somewhere between 2003 and 2002 in style: it

has more elegance than the former and more roundness than the

latter. Alcohol levels are back to normal, which is a relief, and

over-extracted reds were only made by those who aimed at that

style – and who probably didn’t consider them over-extracted.

There were sighs of relief in Champagne, as well, because the

crop was colossal and will go a long way towards replenishing

the stocks of reserve wines that had to be plundered last year.

It was also a good year, and there will be vintage wines, though

not all the Pinot Noir was quite up to scratch and this will limit

the amount of vintage that can be made.

Germany had sun and rain in due measure, with the

temperature above the long-term average and the rainfall

below. In the middle Mosel the rain tended to take the form of

thunderstorms, which created humidity, which in turn meant a

great deal of work to keep mildew at bay. It’s a very good year,

though, with wines at all quality levels. Austria had similar

humidity problems, but with cool temperatures: the stars of the

year are the dessert wines.

Rioja suffered patchily from botrytis – Contino discarded

100,000 kilos of grapes, a fifth of its normal crop – but twenty

days of good weather just before the vintage saved the harvest

and turned it from a potentially distastrous year to a pretty decent

one, if one of rather mixed health and ripeness.

A similar thing happened in the Douro, where the wettest

August for 104 years promised unripe grapes – which were rescued

in the nick of time by sunshine from the second week of

September onwards. Quality looks extremely respectable. In Italy,

Tuscany and the North are rejoicing in a very good year;

Sangiovese in particular looks excellent.

In California, the best results are from hillside vineyards where

picking could be delayed until the tannins were ripe; elsewhere

an ultra-short ripening season produced that bugbear of warm

regions, sugar ripeness without phenolic ripeness. Chardonnay

seems best from Carneros and the Central Coast. In Australia a

huge crop is giving rise to warnings of a glut of red, and in New

Zealand, too, an Indian summer ripened an enormous crop –

not the greatest vintage ever, but patchily good to very good.

In Chile, conversely, the crop was smaller than usual and promises

concentrated flavours. While in South Africa acidity is good and

the wines more European in style than usual.

Aglianico del Vulture Bas r dr (s/sw sp)

96' 97 98 99' 00 01' 02 (03)

Wine name and the region the wine comes from.

Whether it is red, rosé or white (or brown/amber), dry, sweet or

sparkling, or several of these (and which is most important):

r red

p rosé

w white

br brown

dr dry*

sw sweet

s/sw semi-sweet

sp sparkling

( ) brackets here denote a less important wine

*assume wine is dry when dr or sw are not indicated

Its general standing as to quality: a necessarily rough-and-ready

guide based on its current reputation as reflected in its prices:

plain, everyday quality

above average

well known, highly reputed

grand, prestigious, expensive

So much is more or less objective. Additionally there is a subjective rating:

etc Stars are coloured for any wine which in my experience is usually

especially good within its price range. There are good everyday wines

as well as good luxury wines. This system helps you find them.

Vintage information: which of the recent vintages can be recommended; of

these, which are ready to drink this year, and which will probably improve

with keeping. Your choice for current drinking should be one of the vintage

years printed in bold type. Buy light-type years for further maturing.

00 etc recommended years that may be currently available

96'etc vintage regarded as particularly successful for the property

in question

97 etc years in bold should be ready for drinking (those not in bold

will benefit from keeping).

98 etc vintages in colour are those recommended as first choice for

drinking in 2005. (See also Bordeaux introduction, p.80.)

(02) etc provisional rating

The German vintages work on a different principle again: see p.136.

Other abbreviations

DYA rink the youngest available

NV vintage not normally shown on label; in Champagne,

means a blend of several vintages for continuity

CHABLIS properties, areas or terms cross-referred within the section

A quick-reference vintage chart appears on p.286–7

8 |

| 9

sweltering days and nights, week after week. Northerners

who holidayed in the South barely ventured out in the heat of the

day; there were reports of Parisian grandmères dying in droves in

the August heat. In the vineyards the grapes threatened to shrivel

before they were ripe, and now that the wines are appearing on

the shelves it’s apparent that in 2003 Europe joined the New

World, albeit temporarily.

It’s difficult to know how to react to the 2003 Bordeaux. It was

a very mixed year (such a useful euphemism, “mixed”); there was

some good Cabernet Sauvignon on the Left Bank, and some

Margaux, Pauillacs, St Juliens, and St-Estèphes (in particular) were

very successful – and a few more have settled down in the last

twelve months and taste better than they did a year ago. But

others are cooked or green or both, and can be massively tannic

while lacking structure – an odd combination. Pomerol was less

guilty of over-extraction than in 2002, though too many St-Emilion

châteaux were still hopelessly convinced that more is more.

It was a great year in Sauternes, though the wines are going to

need time: they’re hugely sweet and botrytised, and drinking them

young will be like chewing toffee. The very best toffee, of course.

Dry whites are a bit too soft to be top class.

Burgundy was mixed, as well. Reds tend to be muscular with a

short finish and lowish acidity; the best are very good but few in

number (and quantity; yields were right down for reds and whites).

The producers say that at every stage of winemaking the wines

improved, so they may yet astonish us. Whites are soft and

forward; pretty at their best, but not long keepers. It’s a year to

buy by producer, not by appellation: the heat tended to obscure

the terroir, and it’s winemaking style that sings out. That being

said, some lesser appellations, like St-Aubin and Pernand-

Vergelesses, made much riper and grander-tasting wines than

one usually expects.

Champagne produced good flavours, as well, but the vintage

was so small that it will be the reserve wines in the cellar that keep

the non-vintage blends on the shelves – that and a probably early

injection of the more plentiful 2004s.

The Rhône is used to heat, so the extra heat of 2003 shouldn’t

have been such a big deal here: it hit 40°C for weeks on end in the

South, but then it often hits 33°C. There were a lot of shrivelled

grapes in Châteauneuf, however, and many growers were forced to

pick their Grenache before it had reached phenolic ripeness.

Nevertheless the wines are tasting surprisingly balanced and well

structured in spite of this.

The Loire, however, is less used to extreme heat. “Rich” is the

term being applied to reds this year, and it can mean anything

from softer and more generous than usual, to chunky and

foursquare, to massively over-tannic, depending on the producer.

Alcohol levels of 14.5 per cent-plus are not uncommon. Whites are

often atypically ripe but seldom suffer from lack of acidity. Sweet

wines were made with passerillé berries; there was little botrytis.

Talking about the vintage in Beaujolais has become

unfashionable in many countries, but 2003 was a year to put this

best of all Gamays back in the spotlight. It wasn’t exactly an easy

year: after frost there came winds that snapped the growing

shoots, and then midsummer hail hit Moulin-à-Vent and, to a

lesser extent, Morgon and Chénas. Then the heat set in, rising to

40°C during the first part of August. If you want to choose between

the crus, Chénas, St-Amour, Morgon, and above all Julienas, are

the first choices. Regnié is better than usual; Moulin-à-Vent,

thanks to the hail, is patchy, but superb at its best.

The super-ripe wines of Germany were extremely successful

in cool spots like the Saar and Ruwer and pretty successful

elsewhere. It’s the same basic story as in other places: if you like

a richer, more chunky style than usual, you’ll like this vintage. It

suits some regions better than others: chunkiness is relative in the

Mosel, for example. And it did produce a lot of wines at higher

Prädikat levels; Kabinetts and QbAs have been in short supply.

Austria had heat and drought, but temperatures plummeted at

the end of August, and cool nights in September freshened the

wines up no end.

In Rioja, the vintage is officially rated “good” (in other words

probably “average” by anyone else’s rating) and the wines are for

early drinking, with fairly low acidity. In Italy the pattern is broadly

similar: more muscle than usual and less acidity, though a cooler

September freshened things up and helped phenolic ripeness.

Heat suits port. The 2003s are being generally declared, and the

style is as ripe and rich as one might suppose, though perhaps

without the backbone of the 1997s.

All this heat was, however, a purely European problem.

California had an uneven ripening season with heat spikes –

sudden and brief rises in temperature that viticulturalists dislike

because they disrupt an ideally smooth and gentle ripening

process – in the summer. And then in some places it rained during

the harvest. A tricky year for most, although careful selection of

grapes will have sorted out a great many problems.

Chile was warm, with good Cabernet Sauvignon, though the

whites can be on the soft side unless doctored with a dash of

tartaric. Argentina was also successful and, apart from some frosts

and hail, pretty uneventful.

Australia had a more exciting time of it, with February rains in

New South Wales (where rain really is rain), bushfires in parts of

Victoria, and more rain in parts of South Australia and Western

Australia. Victoria and Western Australia probably came off best,

with the coastal regions of the former producing particularly rich,

concentrated wines.

Concentration was the order of the day in New Zealand, too – or

at least it was where the wines were not remarkably light. It was a

small vintage, where quality veered from one extreme to the other.

South Africa, on the other hand, produced concentrated wines

pretty much across the board. Whites can be a bit soft, but the

reds are excellent, and for keeping slightly longer than usual.

A closer look at 2003

O h, that heat! In Europe it was a summer to remember for

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